Andromeda: By All My Sins Remembered
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Krypton had been destroyed 3000 years ago, and Daxam had been reduced to a wasteland by the debris field. Now, walking among the monuments of a fallen empire, Dylan was left to ask whether he was grave robber or pragmatist.


_A/N_

 _So, here's me watching season 2 of_ Supergirl _, seeing a daxamite ship and thinking "wait, is that Kevin Sorbo? Huh. Fancy seeing you at the helm of a starship again."_

 _Course, most people were probably geeking out over Teri Hatcher (since she previously played Lois Lane), but meh, drabbled this up._

* * *

 **By All My Sins Remembered**

Even now, three-thousand years on, Daxam was still a wasteland.

He supposed it looked better now than it had when the cataclysm had occurred. When its neighbour world of Krypton exploded thanks to the reckless mining of its inhabitants, eliminating not only the kryptonian species, but making the daxamites a race of interstellar nomads in the process. From orbit, and on the surface, he could see signs of planet life, but that was about it. There was no sign of animal life. No sign that anything had ever lived here at all apart from the crumbling ruins around him. Even here, he could see the craters that scarred the landscape. Could see the shards of Krypton embedded in the surface like knives piercing flesh, leaving the wounds to fester. The analogy of walking through a graveyard had come to mind, but he wasn't sure if it was apt. Graveyards tended to be maintained. Daxam was in ruins, and if the ruins were tombstones, any engravings had long since vanished.

And yet here he was. Captain Dylan Hunt of the _Andromeda Ascendant_. Last captain of the old Systems Commonwealth, returned after three-hundred years to restore peace and order to the Tri-Galaxies. A paragon of a gentler time, spared the horrors of the Long Night. A paragon that had come to the Great Pyramid of Daxam, to see what technology he could salvage. He, a grave robber, who would present the moral and historical case for restoring the Commonwealth to glory.

 _Does that make me a hypocrite or pragmatist?_

He didn't know, and he didn't ask. He just stood there, on the barren plains, sparing a glance at the _Eureka Maru_ , and by extension, Beka, who'd followed his lead while the rest of the crew stayed in orbit.

"Nice place," she murmured, casting a look around before giving Dylan a look. "Using the broadest possible definition of nice."

He snorted.

"And place."

He didn't respond to that jibe. Daxam was still a planet. A wasteland of a planet that had been laid to waste millennia before the magog, or the Nietzschean Rebellion, or the Long Night that had followed, but a planet all the same. He could still walk on its surface without any environmental gear at least. The gravity was well within the range of tolerances for a human. Even the red sun shining from the sky was tolerable. Not to his preference, but still, tolerable.

"Anyway," Beka said, coming to stand by her captain. "Shall we go?"

Dylan nodded, starting to walk to the Great Pyramid. He didn't know what they might find. Chances were they'd find nothing – grave robbers had over three-thousand years to plunder daxamite technology. He'd come with his force lance and a data thief that should be able to crack any lock that might still be in place, but that was about it. There were other places to salvage supplies for the _Andromeda_. More well-guarded perhaps, but more bountiful.

"So, the daxamites," Beka said as the two kept walking. "They, what, blew themselves up?"

"No. The kryptonians did."

"Oh." After a pause, Beka asked, "so what's the difference?"

"Practically none. If we saw a daxamite or kryptonian here, they'd be able to pass as human without effort."

"Huh." Beka took another pause – Dylan could tell that she had far more questions on her mind, but was trying to space them out. "Isn't that extremely unlikely? Like, the chances of an alien species evolving to be identical to humans? And two of them evolving in the same star system?"

He smirked. "You tell me."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't big on biology, and I didn't get to grow up on Tarn-Vedra, so…"

She trailed off, and Dylan decided not to rub it in. "It's strange," he said. "But if we look at life in the Tri-Galaxies, sapience seems to favour the form we might call humanoid. Two legs, two arms, two eyes…"

"Except the vedrans."

"Except the vedrans," he agreed, thinking of one of the majestic beings that had brought the Commonwealth to life all those millennia ago. The same beings that, as far as anyone knew, had disappeared from the universe once the Commonwealth had started to crumble. "But yes, I suppose whatever evolutionary pressures existed on Daxam and Krypton, it favoured the same basic form."

"And then they all died," Beka said.

"And then they died," he repeated.

"Yeah…" She sighed. "Listen Dylan, I can play Simon Says from now till the universe's heat death, but you mind actually letting me in on why you're here?" He opened his mouth but she kept talking. "Yeah, I get it, these bozos were meant to be pretty advanced, but there's got to be better sites for us to hit. And that's not getting into the whole ethical issue of plundering from the dead."

He smirked. "I didn't think you cared."

"I don't, but I figure that if you want people to join your Commonwealth for the fairies and rainbows that deal includes, having dirty secrets in your past won't help. And while that isn't skin off my back, the showers on your ship are pretty good, so I'd hate to miss them."

 _Dirty secrets,_ he reflected, thinking of times long gone. Moebius most of all. _You have no idea._

Well, he could keep his secrets. The Commonwealth had never been perfect, but as an ideal, it had been invaluable. Right now, no such ideal existed in a universe where it was every man for himself, where no central authority existed, and where entire swathes of space were controlled by magog or Nietzschean warlords. If he could do something to change that, he could bear a stain or two on his soul.

 _Really?_

The two reached the entrance to the pyramid – it wasn't just human physiology that the daxamites had appropriated (so to speak), it was human architecture as well. The Great Pyramid was just that – a pyramid – but it had clearly been built using techniques far beyond what the pharaohs of ancient Egypt had possessed. Techniques even beyond pre-Commonwealth Earth. Standing in its shadow, in this edifice to daxamite might, standing for over three millennia, he was impressed.

"So," Beka asked. "We going in?"

Impressed, and disgusted. The daxamites had accomplished much. An inclusive, democratic society not built on the backs of slaves wasn't among those accomplishments. The pyramid might have been built in a different manner to the ones of Egypt, but it had been built by slaves all the same. Much of daxamite history was shrouded in myth, but there were some truths that remained. Many of them unpleasant.

"Yes," he said. "We're going in."

He found his hand lingering on his force lance. It was paranoia, but as he saw Beka take out her gauss pistol, it was paranoia that was being shared. Paranoia that remained as they stepped inside the structure – there was no source of light bar the holes in its walls, where pieces of Krypton had cut through.

"What the hell?"

Paranoia that increased ten-fold as he saw what Beka had seen. What had caused her to ask about a place that Daxam wasn't that far removed from.

A pair of statues were in the entrance hallway (though "hallway" was an understatement, it was more like a giant cavern). One male, one female. He knew enough about daxamite history to guess who they were. But that wasn't what bothered him. What _did_ bother him was the male statue. The one whose eyes were cast downward, in a gaze not cruel, but hardly kind. The one whose face looked just like his.

"Um, Dylan?" Beka asked. "You, er, want to explain this?"

He didn't say anything. He just looked into the stone eyes of the man above him. A man long dead. A man that was his spitting image.

"Hello? Dylan?"

"Your…" He cleared his throat. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Yeah…no," Beka said. Dylan looked at her and she shrugged. "I mean, you're the guy with the fancy ship and the fancy education, so I think your guess would be a bit better."

He forced a smile. "Only a bit?"

"Only a bit." She smiled as well, but he could tell it was as forced as his. Likely even more so.

Thing was, he knew who the statue belonged to. So when he said, "it's Lar Grand. Husband of Queen Rhea, and the last king of Daxam," he spoke truly. Beka opened her mouth, but he continued speaking. "And why he looks like me…I have no idea."

"No idea?"

"The universe is apparently so large that it can spawn at least two species physically identical to humans in the same star system," he said. "Maybe it's large enough to account for two identical men."

"What, like, the whole Drago Museveni thing?" she asked.

"I suppose." He looked at the statues again – Lar Grand's gaze was cast downwards, while Rhea's was cast outward. According to rumour, both had survived the destruction of their world, only for Rhea to take her husband's life – something to do with their son falling in love with a kryptonian girl. What happened after that, no-one knew. Both species were long since extinct. He allowed his gaze to wander towards the perimeter of the hall, to the statues of daxamite warriors. All clad in armour, all carrying energy staves similar to the force lance. Only while the force lance had been the symbol of the High Guard, he knew the lances of the daxamites had meant nothing but pain and misery for the races they pressed into slavery.

It was like a mirror image of the Commonwealth, he reflected. A mirror that might come to pass if he wasn't careful. He was only a man. The best of ideals could lead to the worst of outcomes if not tempered correctly.

"Come on," said Dylan. "There's nothing here."

"Nothing here?" Beka asked.

Dylan kept walking.

"Hey!" she said, grabbing him by the arm. "You mind explaining?"

"What, why there's a doppleganger looking down on me?"

"Well, yeah, there is that," she said. "But I was more thinking on the 'let's leave because there's nothing here, even though we don't know that there's nothing here' thing." Her eyes softened. "Is it the statue? Come on, you can tell me."

"No, it's…" He paused – he'd have to explain the same thing to the crew. Harper would laugh. Bem would applaud him. Rommie would remain silent. Tyr and Trance…he honestly had no idea, bar some snide remarks from the former, and nonsensical utterings from the latter.

"No, it's…?" Beka parroted. "Come on, that isn't a sentence."

"It's because…because I don't want to plunder the resting place of the dead," he said. "Whatever's left here is all that's left of the daxamite people. And for good or ill, they should be remembered."

"Yeah, so? Doesn't mean we're stealing their pyramid or statues."

"No…but that's how it all starts," Dylan said. "One step down the road to lost morals. Then another. And another. Road's so long that you don't know how far you've travelled until you look back, and realize that you can't see where you've started. And when you look forward, you see the road never ends." He sighed. "I've already taken too many steps down that road Beka. I won't do so again."

She frowned, putting a hand to her chin. He just stood there. Listening to the wind outside, and the silence it cut through. The silence of a world long gone, as he stood in the halls of the dead.

"Alright," she murmured. "I'll play."

"Play?"

"I'll go along with the goodie two-shoes thing. And hey, maybe it'll even work."

"Maybe…" He looked towards the exit. The path to the _Maru_. To _Andromeda_. To the trials and tribulations that awaited them. "Guess we can only find out in time."

He headed for the exit, and Beka followed.

Neither of them looked back at the faces of the dead.


End file.
